comScore: Mobile Banking via Smartphones Grew 40% in Europe in 2011

Since August 2010, the number of smart phone owners using mobile banking has rose by 40%, according to a recent study conducted by comScore. This number is as much as 70% of the overall mobile banking market as of March 2011. The study showed that around 20 million users across five major European markets accessed their bank accounts with the help of their mobile phones in March 2011.

Jeremy Copp, vice president mobile for comScore Europe said.

Consumers want to be able to access information on the go at any time, and with mobile banking becoming more user-friendly through apps and mobile optimized pages, people are gradually becoming accustomed to it. It will be important for service providers, such as banks and credit card providers, to watch this development as it can certainly be seen as an indicator of increased trust in mobile services.

During the first quarter of 2011, France showed the highest number of mobile bankers in EU5 with 10.3% of consumers doing mobile banking. Spain stands second with 10.2% penetration. Germany, the biggest smartphone market in Europe, showed the lowest usage of mobile banking with 6.8% users accessing their bank accounts. 8.5% of the total mobile subscriber accessed the mobile banking, 5.1% used credit cards and 5.2% made electronic payments with their mobile device.

UK became the third largest market for mobile banking in Europe with 8.6% of the overall UK mobile market is involved in mobile banking. However, mobile phone owners in UK still remain the most conservative of EU5 and only 3.9% of the mobile population used their credit cards.

In the EU5, mobile banking is used nearly twice by the male population as compared to the females. Among age segment, highest percentage of mobile banking users is between 25-34, constituting 27.9% of the total usage. Users above 55 have showed the lowest relative usage of mobile banking.

Despite being just 35% of the overall mobile population, smartphone users are responsible for nearly 70% of the mobile banking. Apple users are among the top mobile banking users (index of 393) followed by Google Android (index of 245).

Finally the following table shows the benchmark data of March 2011 comScore. The table gives a review of mobile consumption behaviors and device penetration for the five EU countries under measurement.